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Key Concepts in Continuing Professional Development and Recertification

Continuing professional development (CPD) is the responsibility of all health workers, including public health physicians.

The Medical Council of New Zealand (MCNZ) defines CPD as "continuing medical education, peer review and quality audit aimed at ensuring you are competent to practice medicine".

Public health physicians who are registered within a vocational scope must also participate in a MCNZ-approved recertification programme. The MCNZ defines recertification as "the process by which all medical practitioners demonstrate their competence as a condition of holding an annual practicing certificate. Before the Council issues your APC, you must be able to show clearly that you are participating in CPD".

The recertification programme approved by the MCNZ for public health physicians is the Tracking of Professional Standards (TOPS) Programme. As the following figure shows, TOPS and other recertification tools can only ever measure a modest proportion of the activities that public health practitioners and trainees undertake to support their CPD. Full details of the programme can be found in the guidelines.

For more information on the MCNZ's policies on CPD and recertification, visit their website.